Zelenskyy to be removed? Analyst predicts Putin, Trump could agree to remove Ukrainian President at Budapest summit

US President Donald Trump’s screaming match with his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, last Friday, wherein he berated the latter and urged him  to surrender the Donbas to Russia, suggests that Trump now echoes  Russia’s talking points. His stance may also cost Zelenskyy his post as the Ukrainian President, according to analysts.

The upcoming meeting between Trump and Russian President Donald Trump  in Budapest could present an extremely unpleasant surprise to Kyiv's regime leader Zelenskyy, according to geopolitical analyst and University of Helsinki professor Tuomas Malinen. He believes that the two leaders could reach an agreement on Zelenskyy's removal during the negotiations in Hungary.

Trump had a tense meeting with Zelenskyy in Washington, where the American president "constantly swore" and even threw the battle maps off the table on Monday. He warned Ukraine would be “destroyed” if Zelensky did not agree to surrender the Donbas region. Trump also repeated Putin’s claim that the conflict was a “special operation, not even a war”.

According to Malinen, without a change of leadership in Kyiv, the prospect of a peaceful resolution to the armed conflict in Ukraine does not seem feasible.  “So, the meeting in the White House reportedly descended into a shouting match. What a surprise (not). It is interesting to see whether POTUS and President Putin finally agree on the removal of President Zelenskyy from power in Budapest. There'll not be peace otherwise,” he wrote on X.

Not just Trump, even his special envoy Steve Witkoff is forcing Ukraine to hand over Donetsk Oblast to Russia because it is “mostly Russian-speaking.” However, Ukrainian media claims many Ukrainians, including Zelenskyy himself, grew up speaking Russian as their first language, but speaking Russian in a Ukrainian city has never been a sign of sympathy for Moscow.

Trump’s stance during the meeting has also triggered concern that the relations between Zelenskyy and him could once again take a turn for the worse. The Ukrainian leader had gone to the White House hoping to convince Trump to agree to provide Ukraine with Tomahawk missiles for its fight against the Russian invasion. However, not only did he fail to get Trump to release the weapons, but he also saw the US return to discussing Kyiv giving up territory to Russia.

“Then [U.S. special envoy Steve] Witkoff entered the conversation, and said that the Russians aim to take the entire Donbas [region in eastern Ukraine] … And there was a feeling in the room that the Americans were testing the Ukrainians and what they [would] agree on,” a person who attended the meeting told Politico.

 

World